"As you've noticed, people don't want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about."

Larry Weber

Personify Your Prospects To Drive More Sales

Meet Bill, he's the owner and CEO of a growing, mid-sized manufacturing
company. Bill is in his early 40s, wears glasses and tries his best to
squeeze in an early-morning workout whenever he can. Bill drives a late
model SUV with a booster seat in the back seat for his four-year-old
daughter.

Helen is his director of sales. She's 32, single, a competitive runner and
is partial to 80s rock. She drives a new BMW convertible. She struggles
with managing a dozen salespeople, many who are 10 to 15 years older than
she is. Helen wants the company to invest in a new CRM system to replace
the contact management they long ago outgrew, but wonders how she'll
convince Bill and the company's CFO to spend the money.

Bill and Helen are not real people, but their insights can help you better
connect with prospects and customers. This is part of persona-based
marketing, which describes whoa prospect or customer is by also
answering questions about their behavior such as: what keeps this person
awake at night? How does he spend his time? How does she like to buy?

In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share these tips
from marketing expert Mac McIntosh on how to get started in creating your
own customer personas.

Convene a group of employees
who interact with your customers and prospects. Bring in lunch and a white
board and ask them to help you build a persona for each of your target
customers.

Start by describing the customer's role in their company: CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, sales manager, purchasing agent, user and any other
important influencers.

Next describe the kind of company they work for.
What industry is it in? How big is it? How up-to-date is it? Does it have a
lot of competition?

Then describe the person and their behavior:
Give each persona a name, a title, an age and describe how he or she looks.
How does he dress? What kind of car does she drive? What does he do in his
free time? What kind of educational background does she have?

Flesh out as many attributes
as you need to give a full, rounded picture of who this person is. Then,
turn to your persona's problems and goals.

Think about what this person's daily calendar looks like?
What are his or her most pressing concerns? What product or service
attributes would be most helpful in solving this person's problems? Is he
or she looking to roll out a new service, getting ready for an IPO, dealing
with a new competitor who has just entered the market?

Then, when formulating your marketing messages,
think about what path this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this
problem. Will he or she turn to white papers or articles in trade
publications or on web sites? Would this customer or prospect seek input
from a speaker at a networking group of their peers? Let the personas steer
the route, which you can pave with information that can help your prospect
and customers move forward in their consideration and buying process.

Persona-based marketing can be a powerful way to focus your
business-to-business marketing messages, driving more leads and "stickier"
sales.

Source:
Mac McIntosh
designs, implements and improves lead management and marketing automation
programs for lead generation, lead qualification and scoring and sales
conversion. He's helped more than 100 companies achieve their sales and
marketing goals.

Compiled by Cassandra Johnson

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